Author: Admin

[TERA] Want Founder Status? Get It Before It's Gone


TERA_ScreenShot_20120311_210446

[UPDATE: It’s dead, Jim. TERA’s digital edition has been discontinued. If you haven’t picked it up by now, you’re out of luck.]

TERA heads free to play in February, and if you intend on playing it you might have wanted to get your hands on a copy of the game back when Amazon had it on sale for $5. In fact, if you were thinking about buying it now, you’re too late. The TERA digital edition has already been removed from Amazon, but you can still buy it at En Masse Entertainment’s website for $20. Why would you want to buy a copy of a game when it is heading free to play? Simple: Founder status.

Players who had purchased a boxed copy of TERA (whether digital or physical) and redeem the account key will be granted Founder status, which grants rewards higher in some spots than a free to play account subscribing. Crazy, indeed. Eight character slots per server (compared to 2), a Founder title, an exclusive Terminus mount, 288 bank slots (compared to 72), and a few lesser restrictions over free players. So you’ll buy a copy from EME after the game goes free, you’re thinking. Well, you thought wrong:

When we launch, we will discontinue all digital sales of TERA, so any remaining physical boxes will be the only way to gain founder status. Please check with your local retailer. Boxes will be available only while supplies last, and no new boxes are in creation.

If you do get your hands on a copy of TERA post-launch, you’ll still be able to redeem the code and grant your account with founder status.

(Source: TERA FAQ)

[TERA] Want Founder Status? Get It Before It’s Gone


TERA_ScreenShot_20120311_210446

[UPDATE: It’s dead, Jim. TERA’s digital edition has been discontinued. If you haven’t picked it up by now, you’re out of luck.]

TERA heads free to play in February, and if you intend on playing it you might have wanted to get your hands on a copy of the game back when Amazon had it on sale for $5. In fact, if you were thinking about buying it now, you’re too late. The TERA digital edition has already been removed from Amazon, but you can still buy it at En Masse Entertainment’s website for $20. Why would you want to buy a copy of a game when it is heading free to play? Simple: Founder status.

Players who had purchased a boxed copy of TERA (whether digital or physical) and redeem the account key will be granted Founder status, which grants rewards higher in some spots than a free to play account subscribing. Crazy, indeed. Eight character slots per server (compared to 2), a Founder title, an exclusive Terminus mount, 288 bank slots (compared to 72), and a few lesser restrictions over free players. So you’ll buy a copy from EME after the game goes free, you’re thinking. Well, you thought wrong:

When we launch, we will discontinue all digital sales of TERA, so any remaining physical boxes will be the only way to gain founder status. Please check with your local retailer. Boxes will be available only while supplies last, and no new boxes are in creation.

If you do get your hands on a copy of TERA post-launch, you’ll still be able to redeem the code and grant your account with founder status.

(Source: TERA FAQ)

Planetside 2 Roadmap Outlines Six Months


planetside2image2

I know what you’re thinking. Given the MMO industry is addicted to launch delays like they are crack, what could possibly be interesting about yet another roadmap being released? Well, Planetside 2’s roadmap (assuming you can convince it to load) is a bit different than those you’ve seen in the past. Released just recently by Sony Online Entertainment, the roadmap reveals the next six months of Planetside 2’s development schedule. The list includes a new continent, adjustments to various skills, new weapons and features to be implemented, and more.

But you’ll also see that the roadmap isn’t just a list of things that are on their way. Rather, they are a list of suggestions by Sony Online Entertainment being proposed to the community. Players are able to vote various features up and down, and while that doesn’t guarantee that they will be included or excluded, it is a way to gauge interest in a feature before the development team goes through all the hard work of actually implementing it. Players are also able to leave comments and suggestions for the developers to read.

Planetside 2 isn’t perfect, but Sony Online Entertainment is dedicated to fixing it up as well as they can.

(Source: Roadmap)

Funcom Bigwigs Weigh In On Relocation


jomali

With the recent layoffs Funcom’s Montreal/Raleigh offices and closure of Funcom’s Beijing office, everyone is asking: What does this mean for Age of Conan? Or The Secret World? Or Anarchy Online? Or that Lego Minifigure MMO? Or that kid’s game you probably never heard of? Each of the game’s directors have written their own letters to the community this morning, giving some insight into how things will be changing down the road ahead.

Craig Morrison stepped up on the Age of Conan website to discuss future content. There’s no point in sugar coating it, as Morrison says, and development will be affected by the layoffs and consolidation of the development teams. Development on Dragonspine content, as well as the trade-skill revamp and more are still in progress with most of the content still on track for release this year. Over at The Secret World, Joel Bylos discussed similarly that development will hit some turbulence due to the consolidation of the development teams into one studio, and the loss of employees unwilling to relocate as part of the restructuring. He goes on to say that The Secret World still has a strong development team, and that Issue #6 is on track to launch at the end of February, containing new content set in Egypt as well as improvements to the game’s PvP, among other additions.

Overall, the message is pretty similar: Expect some bumps in the road for the near future, after which Funcom hopes to get everything ironed out and resume normal operations. It appears that, while they may take more time, pretty much all of the content that was in development for Funcom’s MMOs prior to the shift are still on their way, even if they take a bit longer than hoped for.

ArchAge Publisher In West Is…Trion Worlds


archeage

There’s been a lot of speculation about who might be publishing the notorious sandbox MMO ArchAge in the west, and we finally have an answer: Trion Worlds. So breathe a sigh of relief, gamers, it wasn’t who you thought it was going to be.

Leading online games company Trion Worlds and renowned South Korea-based game developer XLGAMES have entered into a strategic agreement for Trion to exclusively publish and operate ArcheAge® in the West. Created by Jake Song, best known for his hit game Lineage, the highly anticipated ArcheAge is poised to be the most polished massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) coming out of Asia. Trion will host the game on its Red Door platform in North America, Europe, Turkey, Australia and New Zealand.

There is currently no information regarding beta or launch dates.

(Source: Press Release)

Aika Online Transfers To T3Fun January 31st


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Make notes on your paper calendar, kids, you have until February 10th to give consent to transfer your Aika Online details over. As of January 31st, gPotato will no longer be publishing Aika Online. On that same day, the title will be transitioned over to T3Fun’s services. All information, including account ID, email, password, and game data will be moved over in the process, but only if you sign in and migrate your account before the due date, otherwise the data will be lost forever. To prepare for the exchange of services, gPotato has warned that any items or gold in the auction house as of January 31st will be lost, and recommends removing said goods before such time.

Aika Online launched in 2009 under both gPotato and T3Fun, with the former publishing in North America and the latter in Europe. In February 2011, the two publishers appear to have settled territory disputes, as both games opened their doors to anyone to play, regardless of region. On October 27th, 2011, T3Fun shut down the servers for its version of Aika Global, making way for gPotato to rule all of Mordor. I suppose now the shoe is on the other foot.

(Source: Aika Online)

Jagex: What's Coming And Going


scaperune2

Jagex seems to do a whole lot of apologizing, whether it is for the lacking infrastructure, your bot-detection software banning legitimate players, the enormous resources squandered on “hobby projects,” lacking basic security to prevent unauthorized purchases, and playing vigilante justice against the operator of a fan site.

Mark Gerhard has posted an announcement on the RuneScape website detailing how Jagex plans to move forward in several areas of communication. For starters, they recognize that players were not informed properly that Botany Bay, Jagex’s bot busting tool, was meant to be introduced into the game gradually, learning about how bots act in order to learn how they operate and eventually be able to catch them automatically. To compensate for the heavy rise in gold farmers, and due to Botany Bay not being fully implemented for a good while yet, Gerhard announced that several parallel bot-busting programs will be coming in 2013.

On the topic of micro-transactions, Gerhard is unapologetic. The money that Squeal of Fortune and Solomon’s Store have brought to RuneScape has allowed Jagex to double the size of the RuneScape development team, allowing the company to tackle big issues regarding infrastructure and improving the game’s audio and visual quality. He does admit, however, that the two cash shops virtually dominated the release schedule, often times bringing in content that felt completely out of context in the game’s environment. Gerhard also admits that Jagex went overboard in 2012 with promotions, giving away far too much with promotions like Sizzling Summer. Promotions in 2013 will be less frequent, and do less to undermine player achievement.

Overall, 2012 had some pretty dramatic changes to RuneScape’s foundation, something which Jagex hopes to continue into 2013. Jagex plans to introduce two new skills, a number of more meaningful quests, temporary events, as well as improving the engine to allow multi-core support as well as porting the engine to HTML 5 and more. Gerhard ended the letter with a sign of gratitute towards the community:

I don’t believe we’ve ever actually thanked our members for helping us to make RuneScape into the incredible game it is today, not to mention providing a completely free game for millions of players. So, a very big ‘thank you’ to our members from myself, the RS team and the free community.

More on RuneScape as it appears.

(Source: RuneScape)

Jagex: What’s Coming And Going


scaperune2

Jagex seems to do a whole lot of apologizing, whether it is for the lacking infrastructure, your bot-detection software banning legitimate players, the enormous resources squandered on “hobby projects,” lacking basic security to prevent unauthorized purchases, and playing vigilante justice against the operator of a fan site.

Mark Gerhard has posted an announcement on the RuneScape website detailing how Jagex plans to move forward in several areas of communication. For starters, they recognize that players were not informed properly that Botany Bay, Jagex’s bot busting tool, was meant to be introduced into the game gradually, learning about how bots act in order to learn how they operate and eventually be able to catch them automatically. To compensate for the heavy rise in gold farmers, and due to Botany Bay not being fully implemented for a good while yet, Gerhard announced that several parallel bot-busting programs will be coming in 2013.

On the topic of micro-transactions, Gerhard is unapologetic. The money that Squeal of Fortune and Solomon’s Store have brought to RuneScape has allowed Jagex to double the size of the RuneScape development team, allowing the company to tackle big issues regarding infrastructure and improving the game’s audio and visual quality. He does admit, however, that the two cash shops virtually dominated the release schedule, often times bringing in content that felt completely out of context in the game’s environment. Gerhard also admits that Jagex went overboard in 2012 with promotions, giving away far too much with promotions like Sizzling Summer. Promotions in 2013 will be less frequent, and do less to undermine player achievement.

Overall, 2012 had some pretty dramatic changes to RuneScape’s foundation, something which Jagex hopes to continue into 2013. Jagex plans to introduce two new skills, a number of more meaningful quests, temporary events, as well as improving the engine to allow multi-core support as well as porting the engine to HTML 5 and more. Gerhard ended the letter with a sign of gratitute towards the community:

I don’t believe we’ve ever actually thanked our members for helping us to make RuneScape into the incredible game it is today, not to mention providing a completely free game for millions of players. So, a very big ‘thank you’ to our members from myself, the RS team and the free community.

More on RuneScape as it appears.

(Source: RuneScape)

The Secret World Opens Up Account-Wide Unlocks


jomali

Cash shops can be a major pain in the rear, especially if you’re the type of player who would take Bioware up on their 350 character slot limit. Buying multiple copies of the same piece of cosmetic clothing or vanity pet can get pretty expensive when you’re looking at three, four, or more alternate characters. As a measure of good customer service, many MMOs allow for cosmetic unlocks to be available account-wide, enticing users who might otherwise be dissuaded by the threat of high-costs to open up their wallet.

Starting today in The Secret World, it will be possible to unlock pets account-wide for the cost of 25% over the base cost of the pet. So for instance if a single pet cost 200 Funcom points (not a real estimate), the cost to unlock account-wide would be 250 Funcom points. If you already own the pet as of the transition, you will simply have to pay the 25% extra cost in order to unlock them account-wide. Additionally, Funcom will be rolling out the veteran reward system soon. Players who purchase a subscription will receive relevant points at the start of the period, including multi-month subscribers as well as Grand Masters (lifetime accounts). Funcom is planning on adding in a large variety of items, although the total list has not been fleshed out.

(Source: Funcom)